TOPIC:
The Vision of Ayn Rand
The Basic Principles of Objectivism NBI Lecture Series
by Nathaniel Branden

DISCUSSION LEADER:
Jackie Hazelton

READINGS:
Chapter 11, Justice vs. Mercy
Pages 283-306

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Will be sent in the reminder email. Below are the definitions from
The American Heritage Dictionary

justice 1. a. The principle of moral rightness; equity. b. Conformity to moral rightness
in action or attitude; righteousness. 2. The upholding of what is just, esp. fair treatment
and due reward in accordance to honor, standards, or law; fairness.

mercy 1. Kind and compassionate treatment of a person under one’s power; clemency. 2. A disposition to be kind and forgiving.

WHERE:
Jackie & Lyman Hazelton’s Home
480-516-3281
Use http://www.mapquest.com/ to get directions from your location.

PREPARATION:
Make a list of the Basic Principles of Objectivism. The list should be longer than Rand’s Objectivism standing on one foot but much shorter than the books on the topic. No more than one page. For example, the Trader Principle and the Non-Initiation of Force Principle would be included. What else? I think this will assist in answering the question posed below by Warren, “What does Objectivism … have to say to us?”

DESCRIPTION:
Rand’s chief characters are larger-than-life figures. They exemplify her ideal of
the heroic individual, struggling against all obstacles to achieve the highest
goals of which human beings are capable — inventing new things, building
great companies, and generally living outsized lives.

But most of us are not like that. We are quite ordinary people, usually working
as employees of other people, small cogs in the machines of large companies,
or perhaps as heads of small businesses and individual enterprises.

So what does Objectivism and Rand’s writings have to say to us?
How should we be living our lives in the light of what Rand has to say in her
novels and in her other writings? How do the principles of Objectivism
exemplified by Rand’s superheroes apply to the rest of us?

In this discussion we shall remember some of the “minor characters” in
Rand’s novels, and how they behaved and reacted in the shadow of the
great lives that the heroic characters were living, then ask what this
has to say about how “ordinary people” can live as Objectivists in a
world built around the “superman.”

WHERE:
Jackie & Lyman Hazelton’s Home
480-516-3281
Use http://www.mapquest.com/ to get directions from your location.

TOPIC:
John Stossel: Ayn Rand and Business
Video from the 2013 Atlas Summit (77 minutes)

LEADER:
Jackie Hazelton

DESCRIPTION:
Stossel hosted a panel celebrating the ideas that Ayn Rand championed. In the candid conversation that followed, the panel of business leaders discussed the challenges of business success in today’s environment and the ways in which they have put the ideas of Objectivism to work.

During my years of leading Objectivist discussion groups, I have heard various activities labeled as immoral such as smoking, overeating, being overweight, declaring bankruptcy, giving blood, watching TV, … and now the latest, recycling.

Quoting Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value—and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.” (VOS p. 25) But wait you say, ethics only applies to your relation to other people. If you were a Robinson Crusoe living alone on an island, you could eat as much fish and coconuts and be as fat as you wanted. Not so says Ayn Rand, “You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.”

We will be discussing how Objectivists should judge what is moral and what is immoral.

WHERE:

Jackie & Lyman Hazelton’s Home
480-516-3281
Use http://www.mapquest.com/ to get directions from your location.

QUESTIONS:

Jackie Hazelton
(c) 480-516-3281
(e) AZObjectivists_at_cox_dot_net

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